Cars!

If this works (I don't normally do scheduled posts) this will be a post that outlines my coping strategies for travelling with small children over long distances. (edit: it didn't work, so here is my post more than a week late!)

For us, it all boils down to

1. Expectations
2. Entertainment
3. Eating

Expectations

What you about to undertake is not great, the reality is you are going to strap your children into a relatively small metal box and make them stay there for hours while simultaneously expecting them to continue to behave, not moan and generally comply with everything you are asking.  Let's face it, you wouldn't usually expect them to sit still for that long?

That said, make sure you share your expectations with them but also let them know what's going on.

"Today may well not be all that fun but Mummy is going to make it the best we can and at the end of it we will be on holiday/with our friends/at Grandma's house.  I need you to help me by trying to be good and Mummy will help you by trying to find fun things we can do on the way."

Also, know what to expect if you don't prepare properly! Tomorrow morning I am planning on taking the kids to the park for half an hour to try and run off some energy before I strap them down.  That way they *might* sleep some of the way and if they complain we haven't done anything I can point them in the direction of that memory!

I also plan on thinking carefully about where we can stop.  Tebay services are on our route and I plan on stopping there because it has great kid-friendly facilities and I might be able to get them to run around again before I strap them down again and make them sit still.  Again!

Entertainment

For my kids this is pretty much dealt with by providing a few books to read, some paper to draw on, some pencils to draw/colour with (not pens, too much mess!) some teddies to cuddle and stickers.  Lots and lots of stickers.

I have also bought a new CD for the journey, the kids don't even know we have it, I will unveil it at a moment when it is all getting too much.  I might regret it but it is the Frozen soundtrack!

Also though, I have this lot.  My three year old is now in a booster with back so I will sit this on the seat next to her (in a bag) and she should be able to reach a lot of it and pass some to her sister.  At any stops we will pick everything up again so it can be used again on the next leg of the journey.

I will probably provide the children with lap trays too (you know the kind with bean bag balls in the bottom) so they can draw and so things don't drop quite so easily.

Eating

Snacks.  It's all about snacks.  Snacks will be kept in the front with me as I know my three year old would just eat constantly for the whole journey if she were in charge. This means I need to be able to pick up the snacks and hand them back with one hand.  Here my snack top tips.

1. Apples.  They are healthy and they take a long time to eat so they last for ages.

2. Breadsticks. They are easy to hand back and in our family they are well appreciated.

3. Snack pots.  Now obviously this depends on the age of your kids but I like these because with the lid you can slightly minimise mess and make a snack like dried fruit or cheerios last longer because it is slightly harder to get them out the pot!

4. Drinks.  Obviously drinks are the enemy of long distance travelling so if you have a toilet trained child these are my tips.  Firstly, don't give drinks straight away, I don't want you to dehydrate the children but if you've only just left a stop and you had a drink there then they probably don't need one now.  Secondly, I tend to give my children milk (from a non-spill cup) as it goes "through" them more slowly so there isn't such an instant need for a toilet stop.  Finally I tend to deliberately give a drink of juice about 20-30 minutes before any planned stops as that means my child is much more likely to "perform" on stopping.  I also, though, use a waterproof seat cover like this one (in fact that is the one we have, I like it) so I can be slightly more relaxed about finding a toilet in time after the cry "Mummy, I need toilet"!

Right, hopefully by the time you are reading this I will be into England and well on my way to my destination!

Where do I fit in?

I love breastfeeding my little girl, here we are having a snack one day

However, Naomi is about to turn one, once she does I plan on reducing her booby-milk feeds by replacing the two day time ones we still have with cow's milk from her sippy cup.  We'll still be keeping the morning and night ones for a good bit longer, unless she decides she doesn't want them any more.

Following some advice from a friend I plan on doing this by offering her some cow's milk, once she is done/throws it on the floor she can have some booby-milk and in time I hope that she will drink more from the cup and less from my boobs!  She gets more and more distracted during booby feeds and so I am hoping she will enjoy the cup as it will allow her to look around, though I'm planning on still having her on my knee for settling down and cuddles, to keep those snuggles we currently have.

One issue that I am having is that I don't know how much milk she should be offered, I've never had to measure it coming out of my boobs ;-) but the main issue that I am having is I don't know where to go for support.

Health professionals don't know what to do with me because I have been breastfeeding exclusively (as opposed to giving formula) for a year, they stopped knowing what to do with me when I kept breastfeeding beyond about  6 weeks!  I also find though, that breastfeeding advocates don't know what to do with me because *I* want to choose (some of) the rate at which Naomi stops breastfeeding.  It doesn't make sense to me that I would let Naomi be completely in charge of this, I don't let her be in charge of other stuff (like how much she sleeps or whether she is allowed to eat (as she often does) rocks, so I am not sure why she should be allowed to be completely in charge of this.  I do want her to have a say, but I don't want her say to be the whole story.

I often find I am a bit scared of people who are very pro breastfeeding (despite being very pro breastfeeding myself) because I fear that if I tell them I want to give my child cow's milk at one, or that I might try and steer her away from booby feeds that they might tell me I am a terrible mother or barbaric in some way.  The thing is though, that I think these people, I sometimes call them the breastfeeding mafia, would think they are being supportive, encouraging me to breastfeed for as long as possible.  Unfortunately, though, it can come across as condemning rather than supporting.

This, then, leaves me in my dilemma, where can I go for support as a longer than the first few weeks but not as long as self weaning? Do you want to own up to being like me and join me for being a support network for each other?

Could have been written about me

I came across this blog post yesterday, in all my blog reading I know it isn't all that common to blog a recommendation for a blog but I rate this post incredibly highly

Don't Carpe Diem

The thing is, I feel like it was written about me!  I love being a Mummy, not least of all because I feel, think and know that God made me to be a Mummy.  When I am being a Mummy I am doing what I am designed to do I find it freeing, liberating, exhilarating, inspiring and I love it.  I also find it tiring, in fact exhausting! Sometimes I feel like I don't get time where I am not being a Mummy and I start to crave "me time" and then I feel guilty.  I am very much in favour of having another baby, I hope it happens sooner rather than later but then I start to complain that even with one I can't get a load of washing done in a day!  I complain that changing a poo-filled nappy is a terrible job or that I want to be able to go to the cinema (spontaneously)!

One of the thing that really interests me about this article though, is that since sharing it, everyone who has read it has said "that could have been written about me", "I feel like that" or "I wish I'd known I wasn't the only one".

Why, as parents, do we insist upon putting on a show for the outside world and then beat ourselves up because everyone else is better than us (forgetting that we only get to see the show that is being put on for us!).

Why can't we be honest about how difficult discipline can be, how awful we feel for not being able to persuade our children to eat, how we let them watch hours of television all day and can't be bothered taking them to the park because it's raining!

The best thing we could all do, I think, is talk to each other.  Let's be support to each other!  The closest I have come is my support network of Mums on twitter but I often find in real life (or especially on facebook) life is edited to show only the good bits.

So, will you join me in some honesty for the sake of all us parenting types?

Some Positive thoughts

I feel my blog posts have all been a little negative recently, so I would like to counter that by telling you some of the great things in my life just now, from little things I do, to great ways I have to learned to enjoy each day.

Naomi is loving her solid foods, which means we are having great fun weaning.  She gets so excited for the food and starts visibly shaking with anticipation for the next mouthful.  We tried to take a video of it, but whenever her dad got the camera out, she just started staring at him and stopped doing anything in any way cute.  Although, that was quite funny in itself!  Her favourite food is broccoli and you can guarantee she will yum up anything you give her if it has that in it!

I am also, just loving watch Naomi develop and learn in all sorts of ways.  She learned to roll last week and you can now see her try and work out how to roll the other way (she currently only does back to front!).  But even sitting in her high chair you can see how much better she is at it.  Her Dad told me she looks really grown up now compared to when he left for a conference only a week ago!  She is particularly cute when she is working out how to use her hands, though she is increasingly working out about her feet!

One of my biggest blessings in life, though, is my church.  I just love it so much.  Such a wonderful environment to have a baby in.  Everyone is looking out for each other, and given that my faith is really important to me, it is lovely that it such a helpful environment to bring children into.  On a Sunday morning when we all get together, the worship is done with children in mind, they can have a drum to bang on, or  a balloon to play with, or a space to dance in!  I even love that we have the coffee break half way through so all the parents can caffeinate themselves; how else would they get though the sermon?!  I have only bought about 6 pieces of clothing for Noami, for everyone just hands out the the things they don't need at that time.  One person I spoke to says that because her boys are the oldest she sometimes sees things her boys wore about 7 years ago, she likes to try and guess who passed them to who for them to end up with someone that she might not know so well!

Also, though, I love my friends.  I know them from church where I know lots of people but there are a couple of people that I don't know I could make it through each week without.  They are up for coffee if you need and know those moments where they need to take the baby from you, for a cuddle, or even a walk!  They ply me with helpful advice and let me rant and moan but also when to tell me to stop being unreasonable and suck it up!  They also invite me to things they are doing with their children for the realise I don't always know what is going on because i haven't lived here that long.

And finally, for today anyway.  I love the geographical place I live.  It is a lovely wee town with everything within walking distance.  Parks that are lovely to walk through and places to play for Noami.  There at least three ways to get everywhere so I never get bored and it is just a pretty little place.  Sometimes as I am walking into/through town I just can't believe how lucky I am.

What are you thankful for today?

I don't like the school holidays

I don't.  It's true.  The thing is, with only a baby at home, it makes no difference to me whether the schools are in or out.  I cannot afford holidays at the moment (well, not real ones, we're going to stay with our families for a bit) and so the price of holidays doesn't make any difference to me.

I hate the holidays because the baby groups that keep me so sane in a normal week get cancelled.  Especially for those groups run by volunteers I do understand that people need a break (because I used to volunteer with a baby group, pre-child) and I get that many of the volunteers have older children who they can't take along to the baby group and so school being out makes it difficult.  However, I need those groups!

Those groups are the things that mean at the end of a day I can have spoken words out loud that weren't necessarily about poo "isn't that a big one?!" or about the noise a cow/dog/monkey/giraffe makes (what noise does a giraffe make?)

Those groups are also places where I can feel I am making sure my (currently) only-child is getting some socialisation and having an opportunity to learn to share and not to hit other babies on the head!

Naomi also gets lots of opportunities to do things like painting or playing with other messy things that I could do with her at home but I actually find quite stressful, she has many opportunities with these groups that I could provide at home but I find much easier to do in a church hall!

Tomorrow is the first weekday of the school holidays where I live.  Instead of going to the baby and toddler group I will stay at home, I thought about taking Naomi swimming but the pool timetable has changed yet no-one has updated the website timetable and so tomorrow I will concentrate on finding out what times I can take her on other weeks!  I might do painting with her, but I'll probably stress out too much about the carpet in my rented house!

Home Alone

Hubby has gone away, he left last night and doesn't get back till Saturday.

I HATE when he goes away, I really am a better mother when he is here, I get too stressed and anxious while he is away.  Even before I was a mother I coped much better when he was around compared to when he was gone, but now the contrast seems even stronger.

Stuff that I normally do without thinking about it (like eating) becomes a major struggle and now I have to make sure I do everything for Naomi, I become even more of an afterthought.  I decided not to brush my teeth last night for having come upstairs, I couldn't face going down our squeaky stair case and waking the baby, again!  if hubby had been here, I would have brushed my teeth for he would have been here to help *if* she had woken.

Even going to baby groups, which I normally do to help me get through the day with some remnants of sanity in tact, becomes much more difficult, becomes much more challenging and so often gets forgotten about, before I know it the only words I have spoken out loud are "What a big poo" and "Is somebody tired?" (yes, me!) which does my ability to cope no good at all.

The hardest time is that time between when hubby would normally get home from work and baby going to bed, I feel like I normally rely on hubby to keep us going through that time and now I have to pull some energy from a place that doesn't exist and do that myself :-(

So how do you cope when you are home alone with the baby?

Well that has been a terrible day

Today went badly.  It might be the worst day I can remember since I became a mummy.

We started with vomiting which meant that we had to cancel the coffee with another mummy friend and baby group, having just got her over a viral gastroenteritis I didn't feel it would be wise to start turning up to places with babies.  After the weekend we had last weekend, it also meant a trip to the doctor, mainly to put my mind at ease.

The day continued with a complete and utter disregard for napping, at 12 noon I made her nap by putting her in the sling, but this left me attached to her and meant I could do none of the things on my to-do list (one of which was drink water, though I forgot to do that rather than being quite that disabled) and meant I got very little rest even when I was sitting down.  She woke at about 1pm which meant that having woken at 8am and being only 5 months old she had already not napped enough.

Come 2.30 she was knackered again, so despite it not being that long I start the process of getting my very tired baby to nap, though apparently it is not as easy to do that as you might like.  I tried for 2 hours before I gave up, although in that 2 hours I shed many tears and got frustrated with everything.  In the morning she had been sick on her pram and because she hadn't napped in her cot in the morning I had been unable to "deal" with that, so I couldn't even fall back on my take-her-for-a-walk-in-the-pram back up napping technique.  I cried down the phone at my Mum, I texted my husband who was in meetings most of the afternoon, I complained on twitter then wished I hadn't for people didn't say *exactly* what I wanted them too (I don't know what I wanted them to say, mind you, and having reviewed the responses they were all completely appropriate!  I complained on facebook.  At times I put her down in her cot, came downstairs and cried as I listened to her cry through the monitor. At times I tried to comfort her with a cuddle or with her dummy.

In the end, my husband finished his meetings and phoned me, he was coming home (I love my husband's job, super-flexible doesn't even describe how flexible it is!), all I had to do was survive another 20 minutes and he would be here to help.

When he got home, everything got a little easier and everything certainly felt much easier.  What a shame that he leaves for Dublin on Monday where he will be working for 6 days :-(

Child Free Morning!

A friend had noticed from my facebook statuses (what is the plural of status?) that I was getting a bit stressed, that I was feeling the toll of being a Mummy 24 hours a day 7 days a week and that having moved so recently I didn't know who to turn to in order to get a break.  She didn't know me that well but she is a registered child minder and thought she would offer to take my wee one for 3 hours.  I jumped at the chance.

I thought it would be good for Naomi to learn that sometimes Mummy will go away but that she will always come back.  I knew it would be good for me to be able to sit down without watching Naomi or at the very least listening anxiously to the baby monitor as I try and shove another load of washing in the washing machine!

Well, this morning was my child free morning.  I was so excited, I needed it so much, I had a pile of sewing to do (a source of pleasure to me, not a stress) and I had a cup of tea with my name on it!  The thing is, though, this left me feeling somewhat guilty, about wanting time away from my wee one.  Was it right I needed some space that was all about me?

Yes!  I have only been away from Naomi a handful of times since she was born and most of those after bed-time.  I have been with her almost constantly for 5 months, you spend every waking moment with anyone for 5 months (they get to dictate what those waking hours are, too) and tell me you don't want some space from them.  My husband and I have never spent that long with no time apart and I love him unconditionally, why should my daughter be any different?

In the end, I feel great for be able to "forget" about being a Mum for a bit, and Naomi had an absolute blast playing with new toys and people.  Will I do it again? Absolutely! Will I feel guilty? Probably, but I'll get over it!

What would you ask for?

My best friend is staying at the moment (which is why the blog has been a little quieter than usual) she is down from Aberdeen for a little under a week and I LOVE having her here.  I love her being here because she is silly and I love having someone to be silly with.  I love her being here because she is Naomi's Godmother and I love seeing her be silly with Naomi too and I love having her here because she is the kind of person who I can tell to hang my washing on the line!

I am really finding it such a blessing and a help to have someone here, all the time (not just weekends and evenings, silly husband having a job!), that can help me with the little things that normally get forgotten about.  I am no longer drowning in a sea of clean washing, I have actually managed to put it all away!

My dishes have been done every day which has given hubby a break too, as that is normally his job.  This morning when I got up (late for the baby had a terrible night but then slept in a little) I found my friend cleaning my kitchen to an extent that I have not had the time to do for some time!

Today I exclaimed that it was a shame I hadn't got my nappies on the line, I was informed they were already there, I hadn't even noticed them go out.

This is not to forget all the times I have been able to go to the toilet without a baby in tow.  I am absolutely loving the number of cups of tea that have been brought to me while breastfeeding (or expressing, yes, this is the kind of friend where she can even see me pump!) and having an extra pair of hands has even allowed me to make a nutritious lunch each day as well as a dinner!

If someone came to your house for a week and you could tell them to do whatever you wanted, what would be your priority?

Owning up to being mad!

So, this is the main point of this blog, mainly because it isn't a big part of me any more, but I thought I would share with you some of the challenges of being a Mum with a history of serious mental ill-health.

I used to be very unwell, I used to be psychotic, I used to be depressed to the point of so many suicide attempts that I lost count long before I stopped and I also used to have periods of mania.  I spent much of my early 20s in a psychiatric ward, sometimes the doors were locked and I wasn't always there at my own choice.  For a very long time the only thing that kept me well(ish) was having drugs jabbed into my bum once a fortnight.  Perhaps controversially, though, I don't mind you knowing this, it is part of who I was (and to an extent am) and I think that the fear of people who are not completely mentally well comes from people being scared to talk openly about their experiences.

I longed for Naomi (well a child) all that time, I was desperate, my husband and I even tried for a baby for a while.  I am so pleased, though, that God didn't let it happen at that time, for I could barely look after myself, let alone another little baby.  I am pleased that God's grace allowed Him to deny me my greatest desire.

I did get better though, I received treatment in a Therapeutic Community and my life turned around.  I love life now, I no longer tolerate it!  I love my friends and family and I love growing in being a Mum and a child of God!


I still find some things challenging though, I have always struggled to keep my mental health good unless I get enough sleep, and (particularly recently) Naomi has been keeping me up a lot and so I have to make sure I catch up when I can and that I do other things to keep me healthy.  I need to make sure I get enough exercise (a challenge in itself with a small baby) and I need to make sure I eat sensible food and don't ALWAYS just reach for the chocolate bar when the day has proved difficult!

My OCDish ways also need to be negotiated, I wear odd socks, I do this because wearing matching socks would stress me out unless they matched EXACTLY, even having had one go through the washing machine an extra time and so be a slightly different shade, really makes me anxious and so I have made it part of my personality to wear odd socks.  All this to say, I can't let that affect the way I deal with Naomi and not just in her dress style, but also that when she gets older and wants to colour the man in the picture in blue, I will just need to let her, it will however cause me no end of anxiety!  As will her putting her books back on the shelf but not in alphabetical order!

The thing I am working through at the moment, is that as the mother of a 5 month old baby who doesn't sleep through the night and struggles to go back to sleep without having my boob put in her mouth, it is completely normal to have down days! The adrenaline of the first few weeks has gone, this is me settled into my new life and things are challenging.  Sometimes she cries, sometimes she refuses to eat even though she is hungry, sometimes she cries because she wanted that toy and I gave her a different one and often she cries when I leave the room (isn't her separation anxiety supposed to come at more like 9 months?), but having a down day isn't the same as being depressed.  i have to allow myself to feel rubbish without worrying that I am becoming ill, for that will only perpetuate the problem!

I love my little girl and I wouldn't not have her for the world, but my mental health had been stable for only about 2 years when she showed up, I took a big risk and I am pleased to report that, so far, we are all doing well :-)

To Cry or Not to Cry?

That is the question.

Naomi's night's continue to be unsettled, though she has gone back to waking only once or twice a night, which for her age is pretty good, it just feels horrific because she gave us 3 or 4 weeks of sleeping through the night which led us into a place of false security.

On top of that she seems to be taking longer to settle at nights.  We normally feed to sleep and then put her down, sometimes she wakes during the transfer but a quick bounce from her mummy sees her back to sleep and off we go.  Recently though she has been waking up during the transfer and then needing bounced/rocked/sung to for 30 minutes or so before she goes down.  Last night it took 2 hours! This saw her Dad and I sitting down for a few minutes before 10pm came round and exhausted we went off to bed!

This then brought up the subject of controlled crying and more to the point should we or shouldn't we.  My husband and I are probably both of the opinion that it will need to happen at some point, though I am more inclined to say she is too little now.  What, though, are the alternatives.  We can continue to bounce her as much as she needs which may drive us to the point of distraction, though might preserve our sanity by saving us from the tears.  Is there anything else, though?

I got quite annoyed yesterday having had a moan about things then having lots of people tell me how they got their little ones to sleep but no-one taking into account that Naomi is her own wee self and not a carbon copy of their babies.  People told me to have a routine, this annoyed me because we have one.  People told me to keep her up in the day, despite the fact that not napping got us into a terrible pickle with crying for hours on end for other reasons.  People told me to do controlled crying straight away and others told me to wait.

I get annoyed not because people offer me advice, however, but because there seems to be so much conflicting advice and even evidence, and no clear answers whatsoever.  My husband and I are exhausted and we need to get this sorted and yet no one is even able let alone willing to help us with anything definitive.

Did/do you do controlled crying? What age was your wee one when you did? How do you preserve your sanity throughout the months of sleep deprivation?

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Breastfeeding traumas

I feel incredibly blessed to have exclusively breastfed Naomi since she was born.  As for any Mum, though, there have been some issues with this along the road.  It can be hard in the middle of the night to know that you *have* to deal with the baby, my husband can't do it.  Sometimes I feel quite tied to Naomi, like I can't be away for very long, not least of all because I hate expressing with a passion and try and do it as little as possible, while still maintaining some sort of life away from the house.

My biggest issues with breastfeeding have come now though, at about 4 months old (although I am sure there will be more in the future).  Naomi is very interested in the world around her and breastfeeding is no way to get to see the world, who wants to look at their Mum's boob or the chair behind her when you could look round the other way and see the people she is talking to, the park you are sitting in or even just the book your Mum thought it would be nice to try and read!!  Naomi and I got a good latch going very quickly when she was born and as a result my nipples didn't hurt very much, they do hurt now with all this on-again-off-again feeding she is doing just now.

The other issue is that my boobs are now covered in bruises where she likes to "hold" on, or pinch my skin.  I have tried giving her things to hold or play with and they satisfy her for a while and then she goes back to pumping my breast to squeeze out the milk and pinching my skin for reasons that I am yet to fathom!!

The next road I have to negotiate is one that Mums using formula need to walk down too; as we start weaning how do you know how much milk to give versus food, and even more than before, as a breastfeeding Mum, how do I know how much milk she is getting at all, and how do I give her less as time goes on?  I know that for now and the next several months milk is the most important part of her diet, and I know that she will take the milk she needs, but I feel a little lost with this particular aspect of breastfeeding!

We have made it through all the other breastfeeding traumas, and so I am sure we will make it through these ones too, but I think I had thought all my breastfeeding woes would be at (and end in) the beginning! Just not true.

Relaxing

Now that I am the Mum of a small baby I don't find the time to relax very often, but sometimes I get to a point where I just need to and I have realised that I have very simple preferred relaxation techniques.

Two nights ago I went for my absolute number one favourite way to chill out by running a bath and lying in it for as long as the water is warm and listening to music, in this case David Garret, who is in my opinion a genius at playing amazing music on a violin!

My other favourite is to be able to read a book, but not just to snatch time with a book, to create space to read for as long as I want, and to read to the end of a chapter as my OCDish ways prefer rather than reading to the end of my daughter's nap!

I have realised too that I struggle to relax if there are chores that need done.  Having had a hideous evening tonight that involved screaming for 2 hours solid before I sat down I had to fold all the laundry and put it away, for if I had just sat down I would have been stressing and feeling guilty.  In order to relax, I now have to give out extra first, not always easy to do!

These have always been ways I have enjoyed spending time, but since Naomi was born these have become harder to do and therefore more precious when I get to.  I love, I absolutely love how becoming a parent has changed my priorities, it is very much the case now that the simple things in life give me the most pleasure.

Expectations and Obligations

First of all, sorry for not updating for a few days, unfortunately real life got in the way!!

One of the things I have been doing this weekend is that my hubby and I took Naomi down to London and we stayed there with my sister-in-law and her family. She had met Naomi a couple of times but this was the first overnight stay.

We had a lovely afternoon and in the evening she settled down really easily and then later we all went to bed.  Now, this is where I struggle if we stay with people overnight.  If Naomi wakes in the night (as she often does these days, where has my good little sleeper gone?) and we are staying with someone else, I feel an obligation to deal with it quickly, in order to not wake anyone else.  Gone are my feelings of letting it go on a few minutes to see if she settles, gone are my thoughts about teaching her to self settle by not jumping the moment she makes any noise at all.  Before you know it I have been up so many times in the night that I even lose my ability to tell the time and I tell my hubby it is 3am when in fact it is 5am!

The next morning my sister-in-law and her husband make sympathetic noises about how she woke a few times but in the back of my head I am wondering if they are complaining she woke them up too? They have family but there kids have been sleeping through for a long time now, have they forgotten what it is like?

So, how do you deal with the expectations of others, and more to the point how do you sort through the ones that are perceived in your head and the ones that really exist? Do you try and make life as easy as you can for those you are staying with? Or do you expect them to make allowances for you while you are in their home?  What have been you biggest issues where the way you want to parent and the ways that others want you to parent have not matched up?

Where do you turn?

The last few posts on this blog must make it look like I really struggle with my role as a Mum, I don't, I love it, though I have had a difficult week and it has left me reflecting on where we all turn for help in a modern society that is so fragmented and where face to face contact with people seems to be on the decline...

Once upon a time we would have lived near our Mums and they would have helped with anything we were stuck with, they might even have lived in our house but that is far from true now.  I never would have seen myself living more than an hour from either of the sets of grandparents, and yet here am I, 400 miles from "home", and having to make new friends and not being near any of my old support structures.

I have been very lucky in that my church has been an amazing source of friends, most of whom are other mummies who can at least help with making sure I can ask people if "that" is normal or for advice on weaning or (when the time comes in the far off future) weaning or discipline or whatever.

I know, though, that not everyone is so fortunate as I am, that they are very isolated and don't have the help they need.  I find myself wanting to end this blog with a "and this is what you need to do about it" but the truth is, I have no idea what the answer is.  How do we even begin to get some help, even someone to watch the kids while we go to the doctor or get our hair cut? How do we get help with getting the shopping done when you have run out of milk but haven't managed to get clothes on despite it being 3 in the afternoon? And how do we fit in those naps when our babies barely nap themselves (see my post here on why that is such an issue for me!)? And how do we just meet enough people that we can get to the end of the day and spoken words out loud that are not about poo or being clever for using your baby gym!?!

Answers on a postcard, or rather in my comments!

Why it pays to listen!

A few weeks ago, my hubby asked me if he could go to a men's thing that our church was doing.  I am desperate for him to make friends (since we moved 6 months ago) so I made sure we didn't have anything clashing in the diary and said yes.

I guess I was a bit sad we were losing out on a Saturday together, the weekends have always been precious to me, but even more so now that we have Naomi here with us.

Well, last week I found out that the men's thing was not just the Saturday as I had thought, but was also overnight and some of the Sunday!  My husband tells me that I "knew" this, but I think my baby brain must have filtered it out!

So, despite the fact I hate being home alone overnight (this was true even before Naomi was on the scene) I find myself having accidentally agreed to doing so tonight!

Thankfully some friends from church who are also missing their husband's tonight (to the same men's weekend away) have thought of some things to keep us all occupied so I won't really be on my own till the bedtime routine starts.

I was particularly dreading it as Naomi had stopped sleeping through in favour of a waking often routine, but last night she did sleep right through till 7am (from 8pm) which means I am a little more rested and there is hope for her doing the same again tonight!

Wish me luck people!